What is the correct path to a view for setting the NoNodesViewPath?

[warren (Warren Buckley)]

Hello
So I am working on an Umbraco 13.5.3 site and I want to set/customize the built in Umbraco No Nodes default view/template, but I am having no luck when I try to set the AppSetting.

Example of a No Nodes View

Docs

The docs are very lacking and do not give much information about the setting and if any certain directories or path types should be used?

Global Settings | Umbraco CMS

Question

So where should I place the view, should it live in the /views folder at /views/custom-no-nodes.chtml and then set the AppSetting key as follows?

I have tried this and various different URL approaches without luck, so I wanted to see if anyone knew what my problem could be?

{
  "$schema": "./appsettings-schema.json",
  ...

  "Umbraco": {
    "CMS": {
      "Global": {
        "NoNodesViewPath": "/views/no-nodes-custom.cshtml",
        ...
      }
    }
  }
}

Why?

Well for this particular instance I am working on, it is being used purely as an API endpoint and does not contain any pages that have a template assigned to them, and I would prefer to have just a simple message or page saying the project rather than the default Umbraco no nodes page.

[sebastiaan (Sebastiaan Janssen)]

On a Cloud project (v13 as well) I have it set as:

"NoNodesViewPath": "~/umbraco/UmbracoWebsite/Deploy/NoNodes.cshtml",

So I think the ~ might matter, not sure if you tried that?

[warren (Warren Buckley)]

I tried the following @sebastiaan
~/views/CustomNoNodes.cshtml

Trying ~/views/CustomNoNodes.cshtml not working

[warren (Warren Buckley)]

I even tried the exact same path as you with no luck.
~/umbraco/UmbracoWebsite/Deploy/NoNodes.cshtml

I am off to try it out in a clean install of this specific version of Umbraco 13.5.3 to see if its a bug or not…

[warren (Warren Buckley)]

OK this is me being an idiot!
This works just fine when you do indeed have no content nodes in your site and a view at Views/CustomNoNodes.cshtml works just fine if you set the path to ~/Views/CustomNoNodes

As soon as I add a content node and even if the doctype does not have a template set to it. The No nodes view goes away and the 404 Umbraco built in error displays.

It’s clearly been a looooong week.